Abundant Scarcity, Scarce Abundance

“Bread of life” had me thinking in part about the metaphors and the spiritual concepts of “bread,” but also the literal thoughts about bread. What is it like to truly be fed? This question has been with me the last week as I’ve thought about today. I’m not necessarily talking about when you were completely stuffed to your gills full of food; the times you regret eating so much. No, I’m thinking about that time you were fed. You know what I’m talking about. It’s the one item from your family’s home that when you’re asked about it your eyes light up. It’s the time you took a significant other on a date. You’re nervous, and you look over at your date’s lingering stares up and down the menu. Do you suggest something? Is it too early to share? You decide it isn’t too early, and you get something - maybe the meal you had the last time you were there, and your date agrees to share. You chat, you share, you learn even more about each other. The meal comes. You’re not sure if someone took some extra effort to make it look as good as it does, but you’re almost disappointed that you’re going to have to dip your fork into the artwork. Your date doesn’t have the same concern, bringing the fork up to their mouth. And do you know that look when someone’s tastebuds have all gone electric at the same time? You just witnessed it again. Good choice on the meal, you. Your tastebuds are also alight - good choice, you.

It’s my mom’s homemade butterscotch cream pie with caramelized-tipped merengue. It’s the first homemade pizza Lindsey made for me just as we started dating. The first time I made palatable brisket at home. Or, even for me, it’s Red Lobster in October, continuing a better than thirty year tradition of going there for my birthday. Not the best seafood, sure (although the cheddar bay biscuits are a gift unto themselves), but it was the time with my family as we sat around together, opened gifts, and I had the chance to have not just my shrimp cocktail appetizer, but also the key lime pie dessert. It is always what we eat and it’s also around us - the visceral, deep-seated ways we are connecting with our plates and those around our plates. And even if the moments aren’t all celebratory or romantic, I know those moments when I felt the abundance of life through the experience of being fed.

I also wonder how often we aren’t fed. We know the alternative - I brought up one of them last week. The fast food passenger - burger-like companion. Mass produced, cheap and of marginal nutritional value. We are on our own, our sense of being fed is limited - we are consuming. What interactions we have are transactional. It leaves us hungry - we may be sated, but salt and fat can only satisfy so much; bright colors and playful mascots can only provide so much intrigue; niceties at the counter when placing a transactional order only provides so much interaction. And so we still crave more - we crave a feast. And over time, I think we can feel that scarcity all around us - a fast food meal becomes a fast food lifestyle, growing ever heavier from the lack of abundance, and instead only seeing the scarcity around us. Not enough. Never enough. We know the taste of abundant life, but our culture bends towards the scarce. And so, more and more, we crave but we cannot find the abundance. We eat but aren’t fed in so many areas of our lives.

We want abundance, but we seem to get into our own ways. We are like Philip to Jesus: Teacher, are you crazy? This is a twenty-to-fourty thousand dollar enterprise you are asking us to undertake. We don’t have those resources! You can’t be serious that we can feed all of these people! To ask to do anything seems foolish - too much effort to achieve an end - and so the people aren’t fed.

Or we’re like Andrew, who nearly scoffs at what’s available - did you see what that kid has, he says? What are these little barley loaves and dried fish gonna do? I mean, I guess it’s better than nothing, but still - do you see what we have to do here? Do you see the work ahead of us? It’s important to note that typically, when in Scripture people were counted, it included only men, so our 5,000 is likely over 5,000. Over 5,000 hungry people. Over 5,000 folks who are following you because they are being made well. Over 5,000 people who continue to walk with Christ because of promise - that he might heal them. But still, the people aren’t fed.

Or, maybe we’re like the boy. We don’t know much about him, except that he’s young. And he’s carrying five loaves and two fish. These were the supplies for the journey, and they were enough for him. He had apparently planned ahead, or maybe his parents planned ahead for him. He was prepared for the walk. There’s not a whole lot that can be done about the others, of course. Good planning and thoughtful consideration are the way to ensure are own care. It might not be much, but it was his. But still, even then, the people aren’t fed.

Scarcity abounds again, one that becomes its own zero-sum proposition. Ruth A. Fletcher, a Disciples of Christ pastor, perhaps says it best when she says that our scarcity makes us calculating, stingy, and cynical. Cynicism that “is a pinched, tight state of mind that steals away joy. It causes us to focus on the negative until we no longer see the good… over time, cynicism produces a kind of soul weariness that can cause us to quit caring.” Dorothy Sayers, the acclaimed mystery author speaks about this weariness, which “believes nothing, cares to know nothing, seeks to know nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.”¹ The cynicism that comes from scarcity is a bland, transactional experience. A way of life that looks upon people needing to be fed and is less moved by their hunger but instead by what little there is to give. A way of thinking that could not imagine that much could be done with little. That it is best to hoard what little we have for ourselves because we were the best planners. But a scarce way of living sounds an awful like a fast food meal to me - just enough to get by, never truly concerned about its taste or the relationships around it, but that it doesn’t cost too much or require too much. 

Jesus invites us to feast. To live into abundance, and to really be fed. It’s only when Jesus finally has the simple loaves and fish are the people fed. Jesus invites the people to recline in the green pastures around them. They ate together. Maybe they told stories to one another about their journey; they talked about people in their lives that they knew still needed healing. Maybe they laughed, maybe they cried. We know that they ate until each and every one was full. Jesus literally fed them. Not some esoteric, abstract, metaphorical “being fed.” Not some “thoughts and prayers for your hunger,” a type of cynical response wrapped into pseudo-abundance. No, Jesus attended to their basic needs, too. Physical, of course, but also the real emotional needs of the people as well.

And here’s what’s amazing about this story in John - we can’t tell if this was some miracle that Jesus performed, and bread and fish kept coming out of nowhere - this is the fully-human, fully-God that could walk on water, after all, I can’t discount the miracle - but it also could have been as Jesus broke bread and gave thanks for the one who gave what they had, that others did the same - that the response to the Word - Jesus Christ - was what moved them from scarcity to abundance - that there was more than enough, from just five loaves to begin with came enough to fill twelve baskets. 

We can bring our bread and dried fish - the meager subsistence of the traveler’s journey - and we give them to a Christ who already knows he will feed his people. 

What are the bread and fish that we give over? I think our first reaction is to think about our time and our talents and our financial resources which is all well and true - whatever we have and whatever we can give in those ways can be multiplied beyond just ourselves and the cynical scarcity that can so easily take root in our lives. But I think perhaps more than anything, we have a chance to give ourselves to Jesus Christ as simple bread and fish to feed one another in real, concrete physical and emotional ways. That our lives, and whatever we can offer, become so much more in the community of faith. The hug that we give when we see someone who we know has been in pain. The way we listen to each other when we share joys and concerns. The times we invite one another out of cynicism and scarcity into abundance by our words and our deeds. We are indeed only simple bread and fish. We are finite, broken people, and even that recognition is enough to drive us to think that our lives are scarce and become cynical to what we can provide the community - what do I have to give to the folks here? But when we do give, even the smallest amounts of ourselves, we create a feast of joy, hope, and love where we can celebrate with one another, and continue to gather pieces for the world beyond here, those who only know scarcity.

It’s what I hope for each of us. That we are fed, and we are fed in abundance. That we can feast with each other, knowing that Christ Jesus prepares the table for us, because it is there where we can be made full. And 

3:14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,

3:15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.

3:16 I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that we may be strengthened in our inner beings with power through his Spirit,

3:17 and that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith, as we are being rooted and grounded in love.

3:18 I pray that we may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth,

3:19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.

3:20 Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine,

3:21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

1. From Thrive: Spiritual Habits of Transforming Congregations, p 106. ↩︎